The Eyewitness (11 page)

A cloud of sweet-smelling smoke greeted Solomon when he opened the door to his flat. Dragan Jovanovic was sitting on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table.

“Don't you people need a warrant before you go breaking into people's homes?” Solomon asked, as he closed the door.

“I didn't break in. I slipped the lock.”

“And I've told you about smoking these Turkish things in here. The stink lingers for days.”

“I couldn't find your Marlboros,” said Dragan. He waved a half empty bottle of Heineken.

“I found the beer, though. You should get some Bosnian beer in Heinrich if you can't get Sarajevsko. I'd even rather have a Serbian beer than this shit.”

Solomon gestured at the five empty Heineken bottles lined up next to his friend's feet but didn't say anything. He went into the kitchen, took a bottle out of the ageing refrigerator, then sat down in a worn leather armchair and put his feet on the edge of the coffee table. He raised the bottle in salute.

"ZivjeliJ he said.

Dragan did likewise.

“Zivjeli,” he echoed.

“How were our facilities?”

“Checking out was a hell of lot more pleasant than checking in,” said Solomon.

“A visit would have been nice.”

Dragan's face broke into his trademark lopsided grin.

“The man you put in hospital plays pool with my commander every Sunday.”

“Yeah, well, I guess this weekend's game is off,” said Solomon.

“You were lucky.”

“Lucky? I'm being run out of town, Dragan.”

“If the American patrol hadn't been passing on the way to their barracks, Petrovic's thugs would have killed you.”

“Bullshit.” As the word left Solomon's mouth he remembered the foot in the small of his back and the sound of the hammer being clicked back.

“It's not bullshit. You attacked him on his home grass. No one was expecting it. It's like you went into Buckingham Palace and head butted the Queen.”

“Turf,” said Solomon.

“The expression is ”home turf“.”

“Grass, turf, it doesn't matter. If the patrol hadn't turned up, you would have been dead.” He drained his bottle, picked up a fresh one from the side of the sofa." and used his teeth to prise off the metal cap. He stubbed out his cigarette and held out his hand. Solomon took his packet of Marlboro from his jacket pocket and tossed it over. Dragan lit one.

“How bad is he?” asked Solomon.

“A mean motherfucker.”

“I meant how badly hurt is he?”

Jovanovic grimaced.

“You burst his spleen.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Deep shit. It's going to be a cold day in hell before he forgets what you did.”

“Miller says I can come back in three months. What do you think?”

“I think if you stay around Petrovic will kill you,” he said.

“If you leave, I doubt he'll come after you. If you come back in three months, I don't know. Three months isn't long.”

“He pulled a gun on me, Dragan. He pistol-whipped me and he was going to put a bullet in my face.” Solomon took a long drink of his beer. Foam fizzed up and dripped over his legs. He rubbed it into his trousers.

“So, I'm finished here,” he said.

“Not necessarily,” said Dragan.

“My commander's not going to want the Commission co-ordinator killed on his watch.”

“That's reassuring.”

“I'll talk to him when he's in a good mood, explain about the gun. He'll wait until Petrovic has calmed down, then have a word with him. Maybe Petrovic will agree to let bygones be bygones. Maybe he won't. We'll have to wait and see.”

“Your boss is on Petrovic's payroll?”

Dragan winced.

“Jack .. .”

“You said ”Forget what I said. If you're going to start remembering everything I say, I'm going to keep my mouth shut."

Solomon grinned.

“That'll be a first. You said they played pool together.”

“Yeah, and that's all you're going to get out of me after six beers. Ask me again when I'm drunk.”

“So I've got to go?”

“The sooner the better. You've got my number, call me in a few weeks and I'll have a better idea of how things stand.”

“Terrific.”

“Off the record, on behalf of the members of Sarajevo police department the ones who don't play pool I'd like to thank you for kicking the shit out of the scumbag.” He clinked his bottle against Solomon's.

“Now, come on, let's get drunk.”

Solomon woke with a thumping headache and a queasy stomach. It was several seconds before he realised that someone was banging on his front door. He rolled out of bed, wrapped a towel round his waist and stumbled into the living room. More than a dozen empty Heineken bottles littered the floor and there was an empty slivovitz bottle on the coffee table. It had been two o'clock in the morning when Jovanovic had left, promising eternal love and protection.

Solomon screwed up his eyes and tried to focus on his wrist-watch. It was just after eight o'clock. He groaned. He pressed his eye to the spy hole in the door but couldn't make out who it was.

“What do you want?” he croaked.

The visitor didn't respond. He slipped on the security chain and opened the door. It was one of the clerks from the Commission office.

Solomon cleared his throat.

“What do you want?” he asked, in Bosnian.

The man thrust an envelope through the gap.

“Mr. Miller said you were to get this first thing,” said the man. He bent down and picked up a bulging black plastic garbage bag.

“And this.”

Solomon took the envelope and slid off the security chain. As he opened the door the man swung the garbage bag over the threshold. Solomon grabbed it and closed the door. The bag contained personal effects from his desk, the envelope a return economy ticket to London with Austrian Airlines via Vienna. The flight left at half past two. Miller was wasting no time in getting Solomon out of the country.

There was a note with the tickets.

“Jack it's for your own good. Trust me.” Miller's scrawl of a signature was at the bottom.

“Yeah, right,” said Solomon, under his breath. He went into his bathroom and swallowed two painkillers. He shaved and showered, then drank half a carton of milk from the fridge and made himself a mug of instant coffee.

He sat down on his sofa and lit a Marlboro. There was another envelope under his ashtray. Solomon frowned and opened it. Inside were the photocopies of the Pristina truck case he'd given to Dragan. The policeman must have left it. Solomon flicked through the papers and found the photograph of Nicole. He stared at it as he sipped his coffee. Miller might be running him out of town, but Solomon was damned if he was going to turn his back on the case.

The Austrian Airlines flight left Sarajevo on time and ascended into thick cloud. Solomon didn't see land again until the jet dropped down over the patchwork quilt of perfectly ordered green rectangles that was the farmland outside Vienna.

His fellow passengers were virtually all SFOR or NGO officials, and the conversations on the plane were about what grants were becoming available, which jobs were falling vacant, who was moving out and what new trouble spot needed their presence. Bosnia was rapidly becoming old news and most of the big aid agencies were cutting back or pulling out. The old hands had already seen the writing on the wall and were frantically networking to get either fresh funding or alternative employment.

The majority of passengers had connections to make in Vienna. Barely had the wheels of the plane touched the ground than people were standing up and grabbing their hand luggage. It reminded Solomon of the annual sale at Harrods, where respectable middle-class, middle-aged men and women turned into elbow-jabbing animals. He had no option but to join the sc rum he had just twenty minutes to make his connecting flight to London.

He arrived at Heathrow as the sun was disappearing over the horizon, smearing the skyline a murky red. He caught the Heathrow Express to Paddington then picked up a black cab to Bayswater. He switched on his mobile phone: there were no messages, but he hadn't been expecting any. He flicked through the phone's address book and called Danny McLaren.

McLaren answered almost immediately.

“Danny, I'm on my way,” said Solomon.

“Hey, welcome back,” said McLaren.

“I'm going to be in the office for about another hour. I've left a set of keys with the guy who runs the noodle shop opposite Queensway tube station. His name's Mr. Wong. He's expecting you. There's beer in the fridge and clean sheets on the bed.”

“Cheers, Danny. You're a lifesaver.”

“See you later,” said McLaren.

“Got to go the news editor's breathing down my neck.” He cut the connection.

Solomon asked the driver to take him to Queensway station. He and Danny McLaren had been friends for almost ten years. McLaren was a crime reporter on the Daily Express. They had met when Solomon had been a detective working out of Paddington Green and McLaren had been a junior reporter on the Evening Standard. They had a mutual love of cricket, football, beer and Indian food. McLaren was one of the few people who'd supported Solomon's decision to leave the Met, and when he'd moved to Yugoslavia had been quick to offer his spare bedroom whenever he needed it. McLaren was the first person Solomon had called when Miller told him he had to leave Sarajevo.

Mr. Wong turned out to be a squat Oriental with a clump of black hairs almost six inches long protruding from a large mole on his cheek. He squinted at Solomon suspiciously and demanded to see his passport. Solomon handed it over and Mr. Wong scrutinised the picture, then smiled and handed over two keys attached to a miniature cricket ball.

He walked round the corner to Inverness Terrace. One of the keys opened the front door to a terraced house, and the other the front door of McLaren's top-floor flat. It was light and airy with two large skylights, one in the sitting room and the other in the kitchen. The spare bedroom was at the back of the flat and Solomon dropped his suitcase next to a mirrored wardrobe. He opened the sash window to allow in some fresh air, then went through to the kitchen and took out a can of Caffrey's beer.

He switched on the big-screen television, flopped down on one of two sofas and flicked through the channels until he found a cricket match. Pakistan versus South Africa. Sarajevo felt like a million miles away. The four and a half thousand body-bags in Tuzla even further.

He woke to the sound of a key being turned in the front door. Danny McLaren walked into the sitting room.

“Sorry, mate,” said McLaren.

“Got pulled on to a rewrite just as I was walking out of the office.” He flung his overcoat over the back of an armchair.

“Any beer left in the fridge?”

“Yeah, I only had one can before I fell asleep,” said Solomon.

McLaren went through to the kitchen and came back with two. He tossed one to Solomon.

“How was the cricket?” He gestured at the television, then ran a hand through his unruly hair. That and the sprinkling of freckles across his nose and his square jaw gave him the look of an Irish farm-boy, but his piercing blue eyes burned with a fierce intelligence. He had won a scholarship to Oxford, got a first in economics, then dismayed his tutors and parents by announcing that he wanted to be a journalist. Not a heavyweight feature writer on the Financial Times, either, but a tabloid reporter. His parents had eventually forgiven him, but McLaren had never been back to his Oxford college.

“I hardly saw it,” said Solomon. He looked at his watch. It was just before eleven: he'd been asleep for almost four hours. He popped the tab on his can of beer and took a long drink.

“So, what's the story?” asked McLaren.

“Three months, you said.”

“Yeah, I won't impose on you for long, I promise. Just until I get myself sorted.”

“Forget it,” said McLaren, sitting down opposite him and swinging his feet up on to the coffee table.

“I'm glad of the company, mate. I'm just wondering what you did to get laid off for three months.”

Solomon told him what had happened in Sarajevo, and Miller's reaction. McLaren listened intently, leaning forward.

“Bloody hell, mate. Enemies in high places, huh?”

“Lowlife scum, more like,” said Solomon.

“Even the cops are scared of him.”

“You don't think he'll come after you?”

“Cops say no,” said Solomon, 'and I believe them. The question is, when can I go back?"

“Or if,” said McLaren.

“Exactly.”

“Shit.”

“Deep shit,” echoed Solomon, remembering what Dragan had said. It would be a cold day in hell before Petrovic forgave him.

“So, what's your game-plan?”

Solomon shrugged.

“Job-wise, I'm going to wait a couple of months. I'm getting paid, I've a few grand in the bank, so there's no need to rush into anything. By then I'll have a better idea of how the land lies. If Petrovic is still on the warpath, I either kill him or look for another job.”

McLaren's jaw dropped.

“What?”

Solomon laughed.

“I'm joking,” he said.

“I doubt I could get near him.”

“Sounds like you did okay last time,” said McLaren. He drained his can and tossed it into a bin.

“Another?”

“Sure. I caught him by surprise,” he called after McLaren.

“Doubt I'd get a second chance.”

McLaren came back with two more cans of Caffrey's.

“What about just cutting your losses and finding another job?”

“I'm thirty-five, Danny. I'm running out of options.”

“Come on, you're hardly over the hill,” McLaren remonstrated.

"You're an experienced cop. Ten years with the Met, three years with charities out in the Balkans, two years with the Commission.

You'd be snapped up by any of the NGOs out there. Or in any other trouble-spot, for that matter."

“Maybe,” said Solomon.

“If all else fails, you could always get a job in security back in the UK.”

“Sitting on a building site with a Thermos of soup? Screw that.”

“I was thinking FT-100, head of security for a big company, that sort of thing. But if you want to wallow in misery, I'm going to bed.” He stood up.